Oil paint 102 - Zorn Pallet
4yr
Jo Sheridan
I have recently dived into the world of oil painting, and have just moved from working with Black and White, to trying the Zorn Pallet - this is a restricted pallet of just black, white, yellow ochre and red - you can get most colours with it - but in a sombre range. The thing that struck me first of all is how powerful the red I was using was - I managed to mix a hideous pink, before I started to work out how this colour mixing was going to work - its much harder than I expected - even with just 4 colours, my pallet was a right mess of mixed shades by the end! Anyway, happy to hear what you think of my first oil figure... @Liandro what do you think of this one...?
So... I had another go... and I think this is going in the right direction - thanks so much to you all for your great advice and help here - I tried not to overwork this, and have now I think got a better range of colours - as to whether they are actually in the right places or not on my figure is another question entirely :) I have included my pallet so you can see how this ended up - so much better than my original muddy mess - although I think I have a lot to learn about keeping it tidy and trying to group my warms/cools/lights/darks... The other learning point I have uncovered as well is the skill of taking a photograph of an Oil Painting - seeing as I paint in my shed where I have lots of big windows this is a nightmare for taking a photograph without reflections and shine on the surface - I do have a DSLR camera, but its so long since I have used the manual exposure settings that there was a lot of guess work going on here...
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3yr
@Jo Sheridan Hey Jo, this is really cool! Before I look at the figure study, I gotta say I love the shades on the pallet, it feels so harmonious.
I'm really loving the process. I think it's super brave of you to show the steps, the ups and downs and your overall impressions, even when you're not entirely happy with the result - thanks a lot for sharing, and hope this helps you study and grow, since that's the point here.
I do like the contrasts and the hues on the second figure much better than on the first one; although, for the overall piece, I think the first painting feels a bit more together composition-wise, and I do think it's really because of the relationship with the background, as Marcus mentioned here. He's right, color is all about relationships - it's astonishing how we perceive a same color differently if we change only the other colors around it. To me, this is actually what makes painting so complexly cool - and ultimately impossible, since I'm partially colorblind... 🙈
Also, yes, many people think of the background as a "less important" part, but it's often what holds the foreground together. I remember how Betty Edwards talks about the importance of "negative space" in her book.
Perhaps there might be a third version of this study where you'd go for the best of both worlds and try to find a more balanced result? (but only if you're not sick of this reference yet - if so, just move on, vary things up for the sake of keeping this process fun).
I agree, it's a pain trying to photograph our paintings - it's a whole "science" within itself. I almost always screw up my marker sketches when I try to snap them to post (and don't even get me started on watercolors...) - so I can only imagine what it's like with an oil painting, which tends to have an even richer range of tones and textures. A DSLR camera might be a more versatile tool than a smartphone camera, but I guess the real advantage would depend on your DSLR and on your smartphone... in my case, for example, at least in terms of resolution, I think my phone has better results than my old DSLR. Anyway, as in overall photographing, I suppose the real key is how we light our artwork when taking the picture... always a challenge for sure.
Hope this helps, although I'm happy to see there's been so much helpful comments from the community already!!
Keep up the good work and feel free to reach out whenever you'd like.
Best wishes!
i would highly advice to pay just as much attention to the background as the figure. It might not seem as important but color is all about relations to each other. Changing one color (in this case the background) is gonna affect how you see all the other colours, same with value. In the reference the background is clearly light blue but you painted if dark red, the complete opposite. Look how much lighter the background in the ref is compared to the cast shadow btw. Value over color every time.
You should be able to hit all the colors in that photo with the Zorn palette. First, establish the background accurately (why did you change it?). A straight ivory black/white mix should give a cool gray that’s very close to the photo, make sure you get the value right! For the complexion colors, I suggest you mix up several tints of black, red, and yellow with white and use those as the bases for your lighter mixtures, rather than bouncing back and forth between your pure colors. Identify the value of the area, determine whether it’s predominantly red/pink, yellow, or gray, and mix colors of similar value together. Color mixing is much easier if you approach it analytically rather than just blindly throwing colors into an ever-growing pile of paint!
This is an extreme example of what I’m talking about, but here I’ve demonstrated how to adapt the Zorn palette to the Reilly palette setup. You don’t have to go this far, but bringing you component colors to a similar value before you mix them will give you much more control.
Looks like you're still painting in grayscale, don't be afraid use more of the yellow and red when mixing. Something that might help you get more comfortable with the colors is to do a colorwheel using the palette, sure helped me when i first started painting with color
Hey jo,
Awesome first attempt, especially with such a dynamic pose.
I would say to just continue practicing your color mixing. Your painting compared to the reference, although moving in the right direction, is very muddy.
I find what helps me when I get confused with color in the painting process is asking the right questions and making the proper adjustments based on the answer to those questions, such as:
What is the dominant color for this mix?
Is it too saturated or too dull?
Is it too light or too dark? Etc.
This just gives me a clearer picture on what color I'm looking for and not just mindlessly mixing paint.
Also check your values often.
If you push the darks in the hair more to the value in the photo, it can open up the painting to a much more finished look.
Hoped that helped and happy painting!
Gino
Thanks for the encouragement - its interesting that the colours get more and more muddy as you go along, and I got to the stage where even putting on neat black didn't really darken anything - my approach here was to stop and think - I'll wait for it to dry, then I can start in again... will this work?
It looks nice to me... The challenge here is the lack of very cool colour, which might be substituted with black shades. I think here the problem might be "trying to add pigment to pull mixed colour in a direction you want", I suffer from this a lot TBH, The solution is also simple, say if you want 5%A and 95%B, just dab your mixture of A and mix with a glob of B instead of adding B to the mixture. But I'm lazy so I don't really do this, my colour ends up muddying.
Also maybe you might want to invert the warm/cool relationship in your painting? because in the ref the body is much warmer than the background, but in the painting the body is seldom "yellower".
I love that word "glob" it is perfect to describe oil paint! Thanks for the advice to help with my colours, its great to have something to work with as a guide. Thanks, Jo
Hey Jo,
The best way to use the Zorn pallet for skin colors is to start with orange. All skin color starts with orange. Mix your red and yellow together to create a nice orange color. It will be have a lot of chroma at this point. Then take a little black and mix it with a little white to produce a blue. then add a little of that at a time to bring down the chroma of the orange. Then keep adding white to create the value your after. Then take that color, create another pile of paint and add more yellow to create a more yellowish skin tone. then in another pile, add more red for a more pink, red skin color. Once you have these piles of skin colors you can adjust the values up and down. I hope this helps with your color mixing :)
What a great idea, I can see I tried to avoid my red once I had scared myself with the horrible pink, so its much more yellowy than it should be. Thanks.
